Reporter Who Wrote Sunday Times 'Snowden' Propaganda Admits That He's Just Writing What UK Gov't Told Him

from the journalism! dept

So we've already written about the massive problems with the Sunday Times' big report claiming that the Russians and Chinese had "cracked" the encryption on the Snowden files (or possibly just been handed those files by Snowden) and that he had "blood on his hands" even though no one has come to any harm. It also argued that David Miranda was detained after he got documents from Snowden in Moscow, despite the fact that he was neither in Moscow, nor had met Snowden (a claim the article quietly deleted). That same report also claimed that UK intelligence agency MI6 had to remove "agents" from Moscow because of this leak, despite the fact that they're not called "agents" and there's no evidence of any actual risk. So far, the only official response from News Corp. the publisher of The Sunday Times (through a variety of subsidiaries) was to try to censor the criticism of the story with a DMCA takedown request.

Either way, one of the journalists who wrote the story, Tom Harper, gave an interview to CNN which is quite incredible to watch. Harper just keeps repeating that he doesn't know what's actually true, and that he was just saying what the government told him -- more or less admitting that his role here was not as a reporter, but as a propagandist or a stenographer. Here's the key snippet:

If you can't see or hear that, it's Harper saying "we just publish what we believe to be the position of the British government." This is a claim that he repeats throughout the interview, pleading ignorance to anything factual about the story. In short, his argument is that he heard these allegations through a "well placed source" within the UK government and he sought to corroborate the claim... by asking another source in the UK government who said "that's true!" and Harper ran with it.

Some more highlights. CNN's George Howell kicks it off by asking how UK officials could possibly know that the Chinese and Russians got access to the files, and Harper immediately resorts to the "hey, I just write down what they tell me!" defense:

Um... well... I don't know the answer to that, George. Um.... All we know is that... um... this is effectively the official position of the British government. Um.... we picked up on it... um... a while ago. And we've been working on it and trying to stand it up through multiple sources. And when we approached the British government late last week with our evidence, they confirmed, effectively, what you read today in the Sunday Times.

Again: government official tells them stuff, and they confirm with another government official -- and that's the story. Note that he says he showed the UK government "evidence" yet there is no evidence in the article itself. Just quotes and speculation. He goes on, trying to downplay the entire point of journalism, which should be to ferret out the truth. But, to Thomas Harper, if you question his report, you should be asking the government about it, not him. That's not his job.

It's obviously allegation at the moment, from our point of view. And it's really for the British government to defend it.

So, you publish an explosive story based on anonymous quotes and already proven falsehoods, and then you refuse to defend it, saying that it's the government's job to do so? Do you even know what a journalist is supposed to be doing, Harper?

Howell digs deeper, questioning how the UK government even knows which files Snowden took -- and questioning if the UK government has been able to decipher that as well. Harper, again, pushes it aside, saying he has no idea and they avoided such tricky questions altogether:

Again, that's not something we're clear on. So, we don't go into that level of detail in the story.

It's then that he makes the "we just publish what we believe to be the position of the British government" claim. Howell then points to one of the many contradictions in the story: the idea that Russia/China hacked into the Snowden files... and the claim that they were just handed over. And again, Harper pleads ignorance. He's just the stenographer:

Again, sorry to just repeat myself, George, but we don't know, so we haven't written that in the paper. Um... you know, it could be either. It could be another scenario.

I mean, it could be that the great fairyland dragon from the 6th dimension dreamed up the Snowden documents and then gave them to Russia and China. Who the fuck knows? I'm just a reporter, man. Why would you ask me for evidence or facts? I'm just rewriting what some government guys told me!

Howell then points out that his story is just the British government's claims, and then asks about the MI6 "agents" that were supposedly moved, and again, Harper pleads ignorance:

Um.... Again, I'm afraid to disappoint you, we don't know. There was a suggestion, um, that some of them may have been under threat. Um. Er. Um. But... the um... statement from senior Downing Street sources suggests that no one has come to any harm, which is obviously a positive thing from the point of view of the West.

Huh. So now he's the spokesperson for "The West?" Fascinating.

Again, Howell, somewhat nicely, points out that Harper is doing nothing more than stenography: "So, essentially, you're reporting what the government is saying, but as far as the evidence to substantiate it, you're not able to comment or to explain that at this point." And, Harper basically agrees.

No. We... we picked up on the story a while back, from an extremely well placed source in the Home Office, um... and then... um... carried on trying to substantiate what was going on through various sources in various agencies throughout Britain. And then finally presented the um... um... story, to the government, and they effectively confirmed what you read in today's Sunday Times.

In short: one government official told them this, and they asked other government officials, who all had a personal interest in having the answer be "yes" and after enough government officials all agreed on the same talking point, good boy Tom Harper wrote it all down and presented it as fact.

A few times in the interview Harper makes the accurate and reasonable point that when you're dealing with the intelligence community, getting evidence is often quite difficult. That's absolutely true. But then there's a way of presenting that kind of story and it's not the way Harper did so. When you have a story like this, where many of the details seem highly questionable, you don't just talk to government officials, but you try to reach out to other sources who can further the story. But Harper admits that they had no interest in doing this -- they were just presenting the government's side of the story. Even that can be done in a journalistic manner, in which case the article should not present itself as presenting factual information, as it does, but the idle speculation of government officials who won't put their names or positions behind what they're saying.

Harper concludes the interview by saying that it's very difficult to say things with "certainty" when reporting on national intelligence issues -- but if that's the case, why did the Sunday Times report present its findings with exactly that kind of certainty? Wouldn't the reasonable thing to do be to highlight the questionable claims and to detail what was known and what was no actually known? But that's not how Harper and the Sunday Times did it at all. And now he's trying to pass off the blame, saying that it's the UK government who needs to defend the "journalism" that he supposedly did. Given that he's admitting he just scribbled down and republished their thoughts, perhaps that's true concerning defending the facts of the story. However, it does seem quite reasonable to ask Harper to defend what sort of journalism he's actually doing.

What??? You mean this is the first time this has occurred or the first time it has struck the noggin that everything in print or in media as news may not be news but might be propaganda?

Every time I see undisclosed source, it screams to me right then, this is propaganda. Ever since The Smith-Mundt Act was neutered, this is what you can expect news to be. If it is not feel good, not celebrity news, and not personal interest, every news article will contain propaganda if it involves government, political, or civil topics. You can no longer depend on MSM to give you the real picture.

Re: Re: Slippery Slope

The Weekly World News went out of business. I used to love to read it. The fun part was trying to figure out which stories were true and which were not. Who would have believed the story about the 300 lb ovarian cyst. It turned out to be true.

My favorite was when the Weekly World News outed some Senators as aliens from outer space, and the senator confirmed it. Then the New York Times ran with the story. The next cover page of the WWN was about how the New York Times had picked up one of their stories.

Re:

I am surprised that a non-tabloid paper doesn't take the two-side approach and contact Greenwald for a comment before running with anonymous unverifiable slandrous rumours and presenting it as a sensation on the front page.

It is basically the form of propaganda called character assassination. That is very low.

Embarrassed

Watching that interview was painful as I felt more and more embarrassed for Tom Harper as the whole thing slowly went nowhere.

It was like watching a kid who had copied their whole report straight from the encyclopedia being asked to show his depth of knowledge on the subject and having his charade become painfully obvious to all present.

Of course, the fact that Tom Harper looks like he is about 12 years old in the video probably slanted my point of view.

I suspect this is going to push the Sunday Times towards the Hearst end of the journalistic integrity spectrum.

The implication here is that the Sunday Times fully intends to serve as a propaganda mouthpiece for the UK administration, and not an independent news service that does its own fact-checking and investigation.

"Um... well... I don't know the answer to that, George. Um.... All we know is that... um... this is effectively the official position of the British government"

Oh, really? It's the official position of the British government? You'd think that, if it were the official position, you'd be able to rely on named sources, and not ones who are only willing to provide anything if their anonymity is protected.

This is incredibly shoddy journalism, and any self-respecting journalist should be hanging their head in shame and promising they'll try to do better next time, not going on international TV and trying to defend the indefensible.

Re: Re: Slippery Slope

Government Mouthpieces

The Sunday Times (and it's sister, The Times of London) are the 'official' outlet for the government's propaganda.

It should come as no surprise that a reporter writing about the government there would be so 'inclined' to write about the entire Snowden event in their terms, especially if he was employed by them. He enjoys his paycheck. Whether or not it comes under 'journalism' is a whole 'nother kettle of fish, though.

Did anyone know that the Times is actually a subsidiary company of a group owned by Rupert Murdoch?

"The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times (founded in 1821) are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, itself wholly owned by the News Corp group headed by Rupert Murdoch. The Times and The Sunday Times do not share editorial staff, were founded independently and have only had common ownership since 1967."

That explains all of it. Rupert Murdoch wants to be Prime Minister but he can't because he's not a British citizen..so he does the next best thing: publish a paper kissing their ass and multiplying their lies.

It's one of the few papers he saved after the scandal about the phone hacking took place.

If so many officials "confirmed" the story, why didn't they just make it official? Otherwise shouldn't all those guys be prosecuted for leaking the information that they KNOW Russia and China found out about their spies?

There are so many holes in this story it's like the MI6 guys shot it with a machine gun.

it's Harper saying "we just publish what we believe to be the position of the British government."

See... this actually would be OK, as a starting point. There's no inherent problem in reporting what the government claims, as the government's claims only, if they also take time to investigate them.

The Sunday Times could have reported, "Two sources in the British government claim X. We requested but have not been provided any evidence to support X. These other people who are familiar with the circumstances say that X is untrue/unlikely, and have offered this evidence in support."

That really would have been a very simple thing to do. If they cared at all about journalistic integrity. Or facts.

Broken. . .

If you look at a lot of the issues that are highlighted on techdirt, i think many could be resolved simple by having quality journalists that called out our public officials so they are held accountable.

I don't think the importance of journalism to a healthy functioning government can not be overstated. And we need to address the issues that have degraded journalism to point that parroting b.s. is somehow acceptable.

Re: Government Mouthpieces

You've got that the wrong. Successive Prime Ministers are required to lubricate the Murdoch arse. All potentially electable Prime Ministers are required to visit the Murdoch residence and kiss the royal ring-finger :)

You gotta be kidding me

T this story strains [my] credibility.

What are the odds that 2 mutually non-cooperative countries could simultaneously decrypt these files, let alone get access to them when the UK and USA can't. (If they had, they would know exactly how many files Snowden possessed, instead of swagging "2 million").

I haven't read the article, but the news doesn't pass the first level of credibility checking.

On the other hand, maybe if the UK or USA ask real nice, the Russians or Chinese could give them a copy.

Re: Re: I suspect this is going to push the Sunday Times towards the Hearst end of the journalistic integrity spectrum.

The answer to your question is that defining who is a journalist is irrelevant to the first amendment. Freedom of the press is the right to distribute information to the public. That right is afforded to all individuals not some privileged class of professional journalists that work for corporate news organizations.

Re: Re: Re: I suspect this is going to push the Sunday Times towards the Hearst end of the journalistic integrity spectrum.

I understand that. You understand that. What about Congress? They seem to think it needs some kind of certification, like a paycheck or something.

If one thinks about journalism as someone who keeps a journal, which can be likened to a diary recording current events, then there are a whole lot more journalists than the Congress would like. The differentiation between journalist and reporter seems inconsequential.

Don't get me wrong, I respect professional journalists, my father was one, for a large national and respected and now defunct magazine. On the other hand, I believe that he would have argued that the protections he depended upon in his profession were not limited to those that followed the same profession he did. There were times when he afforded like kinds of protection to others who were not in the profession in the interest of getting full information for a story. Without telling everyone who he was, there are a lot of people who wrote about his writing with great respect, because of his stance. I was pleasantly amazed when I found out, years later.

Re: Ubelieveable

Re: Re: I suspect this is going to push the Sunday Times towards the Hearst end of the journalistic integrity spectrum.

'mouthpiece' for a lawyer is an American usage.The First Amendment is also American.The newspaper in question is in the United Kingdom, and owned by an Australian. So mouthpiece would mean spokesperson (or the end of a wind instrument) and the First Amendment doesn't apply.

Re: Broken. . .

If you look at a lot of the issues that are highlighted on techdirt, i think many could be resolved simple by having quality journalists that called out our public officials so they are held accountable.

The readers don't pay for news any more, so one has to get paid by the subjects instead.

That's HisStory, and he's sticking to it.

Methinks what we are seeing here is a snippet of the process of stitching together myths and falsehoods to protect the guilty, that we know fondly as "recording history".

It matters not that the story was bullshit, or whether anyone now living believes any of it. What matters is that it, and all the others like it, get published.

For example, those of you who have the intestinal fortitude to watch Fox News, will very likely see this report quoted repeatedly over the next few weeks or months, no matter how many times the entire article is proven to be 100% pure BS.

In fact, this is apparently the purpose of Fox News.

This part of the process creates the background mythology - the popular awareness that this was once reported as true.

History - the past according to the winners - is the accumulated bits and pieces of Official BS that get published like this, specifically so that those pieces can be later gathered together as a whole, and taught to your children's children, as the truth about the past, and in turn, maintains the false family integrity of the myriad criminals who participated in the real events that are not recorded in history.

In this way, those criminal families responsible for the failure of a civilization, can begin again with a fresh slate and their "good name" intact, after the civilization they have corrupted fails and a new one begins - with the same "good" families at the helm once again.

Congress WANTS to define journalists as a special caste.

...because that would serve the interests of Congress to shut up all those opinionated bloggers and only have to deal with the credentialed journalists they welcome into the club (and control them by controlling who gets into said club).

Ideally, SCOTUS would set them straight. And if not them, then the anonymous internet, whom, like China, they'll fail to block.

Re: Re: Re: Slippery Slope

MAKE THE VIDEO STOP

WTF is the purpose of auto-looping, other than to increase the "loop count" so prominently displayed on the video? Even the pause button provides only temporary respite (or maybe it restarted in response to some keyboard command). Also, why does the thing have to be so very large? Where am I, CNN?

Re: Re: Re: Re: Slippery Slope

Re: Re: Re: I suspect this is going to push the Sunday Times towards the Hearst end of the journalistic integrity spectrum.

Freedom of the press is the right to distribute information to the public.

You are wrong. The 1st amendment is only for the press just like the 2nd amendment is only for a militia. Fortunately for the government, they get to define both groups. /sarc Ok, this is only 1/2 sarc.

"I mean, it could be that the great fairyland dragon from the 6th dimension dreamed up the Snowden documents and then gave them to Russia and China."

Well, umm, uhh, we don't want to make conjectures about the fairyland dragon's intentions. All we know is that we leave the offerings of marshmallows and virgins' blood and the stories come to us fully written. I wouldn't know what the fairyland dragon actually did, the government didn't write that bit for us.

Re: Slippery Slope

Sympathy For the Sunday Times

There is another way to look at the Sunday Times and it's actions. After what has happened it is unlikely that the government of Great Britten will ask the same of the Times again. The integrity of the Times will probably improve going forward. We should keep a critical eye on them and hope for the best.

Re: Re: Slippery Slope

"in the US it would be National Enquirer"

I can see how working for a celebrity gossip paper is a step down, but let's not forget that by every measure over the past couple of decades, the NE consistently rates at the top in terms of factual accuracy. They pretty much have to, because they primarily report (insulting) celebrity gossip and as a result they get sued a lot. If they couldn't prevail in court, they'd be out of business.

In terms of credibility, it's hard to do better than the National Enquirer. Now, if only they'd report on stuff that is actually important.

Misleading Headline

The headline for this article is misleading. The journalist stated that his source came from the UK government. That is very different from simply writing what the government to told (ie instructed) him to write, as Techdirt's headline implies.

Yes, it's entirely possible that the UK government supplied inaccurate or misleading information to support its own agenda - just as the US government frequently does. But that's different from directing a journalist to write something. The choice of what to write is the journalist's. Though, as most people know, journalists usually have an agenda. too. The Sunday Times is part of Murdoch's empire, so I don't suppose this guy would last long there if he didn't toe the Conservative party line, any more than would a Guardian journalist who didn't do the opposite!

Politican bias is the norm

Most UK newspapers have a political bias. To get a balanced view, you need to read at least one on each side of the political divide. (As Britons interested in politics often do.) Even then, the information you end up with is no more reliable than that gleaned from any media source in any country.

Re: Misleading Headline

That is very different from simply writing what the government to told (ie instructed) him to write, as Techdirt's headline implies.

It's "What UK Gov't Told Him" not "What UK Gov't Told Him to Write". The former means they said things and he wrote them down, which is what happened. The latter means they told him to write them down.

Re:

I found it ! I spent my day being polite and remind him what he did and will do that for few days for sure and then from time to time ...Join me in insuring this is the store at least Tom Harper will never forget and it will mark his professional ( LOL) life ... @TomJHarper

We live in time of Internet of Things not in 70s where fake jurnos like this can write a story like this and hope they have serious future writing ...

Anonymous Elite Sources

Routine use of anonymous elite sources is indicative of 'Buying out' by news outlets, or stories being allowed to pass through a new sixth news filter of the Propaganda Model, as this article "Newsroom Conspiracy at Murdoch’s Sunday Times?" explores: http://snoopman.net.nz/?p=2994